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The invention relates to an interactive computer-based role-playing game to promote abstinence from substance abuse.
Key components of effective drug abuse prevention programs have been identified by extensive research on the effectiveness of existing drug abuse interventions. Some of these key components are:
1) The approach should be research based/theory driven. Research that focuses on tests of theory-driven ideas and that successfully incorporates tests of hypotheses permits the design of interventions that rely on methods proven to be effective, while discarding those methods proven to be ineffective.
2) The approach should deliver developmentally appropriate information about drugs. Children and adolescents are more interested in concrete information on the here and now experience than they are in information about possible effects in the distant future.
3) Social resistance skills training should be incorporated. These programs help prepare individuals to identify pressures to use drugs, and give them the skills they need to resist peer pressure to use drug""s while maintaining their friendships.
4) Interactive teaching techniques should be used. Successful drug abuse resistance curricula tend to use role-playing, discussions and small group activities to promote the active participation of the students.
5) Adequate coverage and sufficient follow up. The effectiveness of interventions in preventing subsequent substance abuse increases with increased exposure to the key components of the intervention, and decays over time since the last exposure to intervention.
6) Evaluation. It is important to be able to evaluate the success of the approach to demonstrate its effectiveness, and to identify the key components of the approach that make it effective so that they may better be exploited in future revisions of the method.
7) Peer group involvement in teaching. It has been widely reported that in prevention curricula the use of peers to deliver substance abuse prevention information greatly enhances program effectiveness. Furthermore, Oetting and coworkers have suggested that the peer cluster, which they define as the small intimate group who share beliefs and values, mediates the influence of other psychosocial variables on drug abuse.
8) Identified correlates of substance abuse which are likely to play causative roles in either facilitating or preventing substance abuse should be addressed. For example, contrary to popular belief, the data suggest little correlation between knowledge about the medical effects of drugs and drug use, but the same data reveal a high correlation between perceptions that drug use is incompatible with the individual""s life objectives and the individual""s abstention from drug experimentation. The data suggest that prevention efforts should emphasize the incompatibility of substance abuse with the achievement of life plans and the negative psychological and social consequences of drug use.